Teaching beginning‐level readers can pose a challenge to even experienced instructors. These learners have varied purposes, goals, backgrounds, and levels of literacy in their first language. Instructors should be aware of these variables and should use both top‐down and bottom‐up strategies at this level while seeking to boost student reading rate. Significant adjustments must be made in running the classroom in order to facilitate student comprehension. Teachers should simplify their language and focus students' attention on the content at hand. Teachers should also foster student vocabulary acquisition. This can be done through providing extensive reading opportunities, multiple exposures to vocabulary terms, and through the use of graded readers and realia. Finally, teachers should be aware of and address learner affective variables.